<?php
/**
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 * Copyright © 2018 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
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**/

$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Associate degree on track?',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2018/11/13.jpg" alt="The beginnings of a line at the Social Security administration office" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		I checked my email before heading out this morning.
		I was already behind schedule as to when I was hoping to leave, but there was a letter from the school telling me my grades were still within acceptable range.
		They send one of these every term, just before school gets back in.
		So I logged into the school website to check my grade on that one course.
		A B-.
		It&apos;s not good, but at least it&apos;s not as close to failing as I&apos;d feared.
		It&apos;s worth mentioning too that this school considers a C- to be failing.
		I needed to get at least 72% to avoid failing that course.
	</p>
	<p>
		So things are on track, as best I can tell.
		I need to put in a graduation request for my old degree, so we&apos;ll see how much of a problem that will turn out to be now that the advisor had me switch degrees.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="paperwork">
	<h2>Paperwork</h2>
	<p>
		I arrived at the Social Security Administration office earlier than intended.
		I was actually worried I wouldn&apos;t get there until after they&apos;d been open a while and developed a long line.
		Being Tuesday, today I had errands unrelated to my paperwork quest, so I needed to take care of getting the paperwork in order as quickly as feasible.
		Even having gotten there over half an hour before they opened, a line had already begun to form.
		More people arrived, and by the time I&apos;d locked up my bike and gotten in line, there were twelve people ahead of me.
		By the time their doors had opened, there were even more than that behind me.
		There is simply no way to avoid a long wait here.
		If you get there early enough to be in front, you wait for them to open, and if you get there when they open, you wait for your turn.
	</p>
	<p>
		Once open, I only had a twelve-minute wait this time.
		That was my reward for having already waited so long outside.
	</p>
	<p>
		When it was my turn, the representative helping me asked for my Social Security number.
		I&apos;d already told their machine that gave me a waiting number that I didn&apos;t remember it.
		Why do they have you tell the machine if the representative is going to ask you again?
		Anyway, I explained that I&apos;d lost the card and needed it replaced.
		As I didn&apos;t have the card, I didn&apos;t have the number.
		They got really weird with me, then told me they wanted me to memorise it.
		Um.
		No.
		There&apos;s no good reason to memorise that garbage.
		I much prefer telling people that ask for the number that I don&apos;t have my Social Security card with me, and spreading the idea people don&apos;t need or want to remember strings of digits.
		They then asked me to write down my date of birth.
		I did, and when they looked at it, they couldn&apos;t figure it out.
		I put it in standard year-month-day (big endian) format, and they asked me if the middle number was the month.
		I&apos;m not going to put my data of birth here, but it&apos;s worth noting that the month is the only segment with a value less than thirteen.
		I get that most people in my country use a non-standard, mixed-up date format that&apos;s neither big endian nor little endian.
		However, it makes absolutely no sense for any other segment (seeing as the other segments are numbers too high to be month numbers) in my date of birth to be the month.
		Clearly, this person was an idiot.
		And they think they have the right to tell me off for not memorising strings of digits that I have no use for in my daily life.
		I don&apos;t think so.
	</p>
	<p>
		Next, I stopped by the courthouse.
		The line feels a lot faster there when you don&apos;t have a court appointment you&apos;re trying not to be late to.
		You can just stand in line, not staring at the clock, and you get through the line fast enough.
		It turns out there&apos;s a records office I could&apos;ve gotten the paperwork from instead, had I known about the option, which would have allowed me to skip the line entirely.
		Next time, I&apos;ll know.
		When selling me the certified copy of the paperwork, the cashier asked me for my telephone number.
		They of course let me buy the document even though I don&apos;t have telephone service.
		However, I can&apos;t help but wonder why they asked for a telephone number in the first place.
		What possible purpose could that serve!?
		It&apos;s not even like I was filing new paperwork or anything and they wanted to put that on record with the paperwork.
		I was buying a copy of existing paperwork.
		That was all.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="rest">
	<h2>Rest?</h2>
	<p>
		I&apos;m hoping tomorrow can at least partly be a day or rest.
		School will start in the evening.
		Last term, I wanted to take a nice, scented bath on the morning of the day school would start, but that issue with my mother&apos;s computer breaking down happened that day, and I needed to spend the day trying to fix the problem instead.
		It&apos;s likely I&apos;ll end up needing to run a couple errands tomorrow too.
		I should check out the recycling centre for a hard drive enclosure, and I should stop at the discount store to get more soy milk.
		Hopefully before my errands though, I can just soak in the tub for a while and try to relax.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
